![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Important changes took place in Germany with regards to the delimitation of the single-member districts now used for electing the Bundestag and the legislatures of 13 Länder. This manuscript measures electoral malapportionment in all federal and state elections held since the 1940s and finds a significant (if uneven) trend towards more equal voting power for citizens. Why did this development take place? This manuscript argues that the impetus for reform came from the judiciary rather than from incumbent legislators. The latter had little individual or party interest for such changes but were faced with court decisions that demanded action. The legal framework was certainly a contributing factor, as evidenced by the creation in 1956 of a federal standing boundary commission, to report following each election, and the limitation of acceptable deviations from the average, a landmark move that was emulated by most Länder much later. Such developments are summarised, and significant reductions of the level of malapportionment are connected with judicial decisions and changes in redistribution rules.
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank Alain Paquet for his invaluable help with regards to the preparation of graphs, and the following people who supplied information pertaining to their respective jurisdiction: Geert Baasen, Office of the Landeswahlleiter, Berlin; Martin Fenske, Landtag, Schleswig-Holstein; Andrea Freitag, Statistikamt Nord, Hamburg; Marcel Hürter, President, Statistische Landesamt and Landeswahlleiter, Rheinland-Pfalz; Elena Herzberg, Bibliothek, Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin; Julia Höflich, Statistische Bundesamt, Wiesbaden; Ralf Martins, Landesamt für Statistik, Niedersachsen; Andrea Mehring, Bibliothek, Landtag Niedersachsen; Claus-Peter Steinweg, Office of the Landeswahlleiter, Schleswig-Holstein.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Speech by Minister Christian Heinz during the debate on a draft law altering electoral boundaries, Landtag of Hesse, 7 Dec. 2021, Plenarprotokoll, p. 7194. http://starweb.hessen.de/cache/PLPR//20/9/00089.pdf.
2 This problem has been aggravated by the decision, in 2013, to add levelling seats (Ausgleichsmandate) in order to offset the imbalances created by Überhang seats. In 2017 and 2021, the Bundestag was inflated from 598 to respectively 709 and 736 seats.
3 See the table in Niehuss (Citation1990, 131) detailing the increase of malapportionment in Reichstag elections held from 1871 to 1912.
4 No formula was initially specified. In its first report, the boundary commission held that using for that purpose the D’Hondt method (then used for distributing seats among parties) would unduly penalise smaller jurisdictions (Wahlkreiskommission Citation1958, 3; Wahlkreiskommission Citation1962, 6), and used instead the LR-Hare formula (known in Germany as Hare-Niemeyer). In its 2007 report, the commission came up with evidence that the Ste-Laguë-Schepers formula would produce fairer outcomes (Wahlkreiskommission Citation2007, 5), and the next year the election act was amended accordingly.
5 Decision of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, Wahlkreiseinteilung, 26 Aug. 1961 (BVerfGE 13, 127).
6 Decision of the Second Senate of the Court, Wahlkreiseinteilung – Überhangmandate, 22 May 1963 (BVerfGE 16, 130).
7 Idem.
8 The Court later revisited the issue in the Decision of the Second Senate of the Court, Überhangmandate, 10 April 1997 (2 BVergGE 1/95), after the CDU won 12 seats in excess, and re-affirmed the same principle, namely that such seats were not incompatible with the equality clause ‘as long as the constituencies are, within the bounds of possibility, of approximately equal size’ (Kommers and Miller Citation2012, 243–247).
9 Dreizehntes Gesetz zur Änderung des Bundeswahlgesetzes, 15 Nov. 1996, BGBl. I S. 1712.
10 This author’s computations based on data found in United Kingdom House of Commons Library (Citation2020) and Ministère de l’Intérieur, France (Citation2019).
11 Schleswig-Holstein (1947) and Berlin (1958) provided that districts should have equal populations as far as possible. Upon introducing single-member districts in 1989, Rhineland-Palatinate limited deviations from the average to 33 1/3 per cent. The other Land laws did not mention population as a criterion.
12 Staatsgerichthof für das Land Baden- Württemberg, Decision of 23 Feb. 1990 (ESA 40, 61).
13 Staatsgerichthof für das Land Baden-Württemberg, Decision of 14 Jun. 2007 (GR 1/06).
14 Niedersächsischer Staatsgerichthof, Decision of 24 Feb. 2000 (NVwZ 2000, 670).
15 Staatsgerichthof des Landes Hessen, Decision of 5 May 2004 (P.St. 1872); Decision of 16 Jun. 2006 (P.St. 1910).
16 Hesse, Gesetzentwurf der Fraktionen der CDU und BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN für ein Gesetz zur Änderung des Landtagswahlgesetzes, Drucksache 19/5273, 19 Sep. 2017. http://starweb.hessen.de/cache/DRS/19/3/05273.pdf.
17 Länderwahlgesetz vom 22. Juli 1990 (GBl. DDR 1990 I S. 960).
18 Berlin stands out as the only jurisdiction where members of the legislature are formally absent from the redistribution process: the Senate (Land government) apportions the seats among the 12 boroughs, and within each one, districts are delimited by the borough council.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Louis Massicotte
Louis Massicotte was a Professor of Political Science in the Université de Montréal and Université Laval (Quebec City). He retired in 2018. He published an article in German Politics on the electoral systems of the German Länder (2003). In 2021, he was appointed a member of the redistribution commission for federal electoral districts in the Province of Quebec.